Theoretical astrophysics and plasma physics at RPC

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On the generation of astrophysically-relevant intermittent magnetic turbulence in the laboratory

(2026)

Authors:

Itamar Cohen, Weipeng Yao, Archie FA Bott, Sophia N Chen, Nikola Mirkovic, Jerome Beard, Petrisor Gabriel Bleotu, Georgiana Giubegal, Anda-Maria Talposi, Yoav Heller, Clement Lacoste, Patrizio Antici, Damiano Caprioli, Emmanuel DHumieres, Victor Malka, Alexandre Marcowith, Ovidiu Tesileanu, Mateusz Ruszkowski, Philipp Kempski, Olga Alexandrova, Julien Fuchs
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Properties of black hole mergers in disks of active galactic nuclei

(2026)

Authors:

Hiromichi Tagawa, Zoltán Haiman, Bence Kocsis
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Occurrence of Flat‐Top Electron Velocity Distributions in Magnetotail Plasma Jets

Geophysical Research Letters American Geophysical Union (AGU) 53:12 (2026) e2026GL123161

Authors:

L Richard, Yu V Khotyaintsev, C Norgren

Abstract:

Abstract Non‐Maxwellian electron velocity distributions (eVDFs) are ubiquitous in collisionless plasmas. For example, various types of non‐Maxwellian eVDFs exist in magnetic reconnection jets in the Earth's magnetotail. At thermal energies, eVDF can be flat‐topped due to electron trapping associated with magnetic reconnection. However, the occurrence of such eVDFs in magnetotail reconnection remains largely unconstrained. Here, we statistically investigate flat‐top eVDFs in fast plasma jets in the magnetotail using a new method for classifying eVDFs. We show that at least of the eVDFs in the jets are flat‐tops. In addition, we find that most jets exhibit flat‐top eVDFs, indicating that this signature of parallel acceleration and electron streaming is characteristic of the jets. We find that these flat‐top eVDFs are localized within an ion‐inertial‐length‐scale region near the edges of the current sheet and the ion diffusion region. Our results highlight the importance of flat‐top eVDFs in non‐local thermodynamic equilibrium collisionless plasmas.
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Stellar discs and intermediate-mass black holes in galactic nuclei I. Fragmenting the disc in an isotropic stellar potential

(2026)

Authors:

Taras Panamarev, Xiang Zou, Bence Kocsis
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Latent thermal instability

(2026)

Authors:

Prakriti Pal Choudhury, Archie FA Bott
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